Data Networking
Samba 4 arrives with full Active Directory support
The team behind the Samba Project has released version 4.0 of its open source Windows interoperability software suite, the first version to offer full compatibility with Microsoft's Active Directory protocols. The Samba stack is by far the most popular solution for networking non-Microsoft platforms with Windows machines, but …
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Re: only makes sense for expensive unix consultants
@Blarkon, you say, "Good UNIX/Linux admins can cost 2 to 3 times per hour what a Windows admin costs"
Well, you get what you pay for, either an MS Certified mouse money for cheap, who knows how to reboot the server when it goes tits up.
Or you can get an engineer who will run Linux and Linux VMs on your servers in such a way that you can do more on fewer machines.
If you can do more on fewer machines then you need fewer admins!
5 linux servers can be run by, say one admin, and they would replace 20 windows servers that would require a whole team of windows admins.
So it is all about TCO, not how expensive an admin is.
@Blarkon - Re: only makes sense for expensive unix consultants
It's not only the cost of a Windows license, you forgot to consider the cost of a Symantec/McAfee or whatever AV license you will no longer need.
"does not need monthly critical vuln patching"
er . .
"Software 40 security updates"
currently waiting to be installed this month.
Linux server (in this case Ubuntu based).
Re: "does not need monthly critical vuln patching"
And how many reboots required?
Re: "does not need monthly critical vuln patching"
"And how many reboots required?"
Just the one - new Kernel. But it is optional i.e. doesn't nag you all the time!
So Yes, fewer than the Windows server.
Re: "does not need monthly critical vuln patching"
One reboot for a new kernel after a month of patches is the same as one reboot after patch tuesday. It may well be "optional" to reboot after a new kernel has been installed, but you're not going to be using the new kernel until after that reboot and you did install it because it was an essential update, didn't you?
Re: "does not need monthly critical vuln patching"
Windows vulns are far more serious than linux vulns on average. counting without context is not a valid metric. Counting bicycles is not the same as counting trucks.
"They can also integrate with Microsoft Exchange servers, and they can even be managed using Microsoft's own administration tools"
Nice job, although it will be interesting to see if there are any shenanigans from Redmond prompted by this.
They do have form.
Sigh...
Did you read the bit in the article where it said that MS supplied access to their testing labs, in order that the SAMBA people can assure compatibility?
Right, so let's get to the question that I'm not seeing asked.
Samba 4 lets you integrate with a domain, act as a domain controller, interface with Exchange etc.
So what happens if I set up a domain controller on eg Server 2K8, add in a bunch of other domain controllers using Samba 4, then remove the original Server 2K8 machine? Does it still work?
More importantly, if you're only using AD for authentication - what happens when it comes to CALs if you're using an AD running exclusively on Samba4 installs on non-Windows boxes? I suspect Microsoft's stance will be that you still need CALs on either a per-user or per-machine basis, but it's an interesting question to ask...
Thank you
That was the question I had as well. Here's hoping someone has an answer.
"So what happens if I set up a domain controller on eg Server 2K8, add in a bunch of other domain controllers using Samba 4, then remove the original Server 2K8 machine? Does it still work?"
AFAIK, it would continue working, in just the same way as if you had added a load of 2K8 DCs then removed the original. Someone else can probably confirm this.
"More importantly, if you're only using AD for authentication - what happens when it comes to CALs if you're using an AD running exclusively on Samba4 installs on non-Windows boxes? I suspect Microsoft's stance will be that you still need CALs on either a per-user or per-machine basis, but it's an interesting question to ask..."
I'm not sure which way round you are talking here.
If you mean a Windows server with Samba clients, I believe you still need CALs.
If you mean a Samba server with Windows clients, you don't.
@Dr. Mouse: Sorry, should've been clearer.
I'm specifically thinking of the case where the domain runs entirely on Samba servers, with Windows present only on the client side. It'd be a lovely way of getting rid of the "authenticating user account/machine = need a CAL" tax, if you're not also using other services.
I'm in the process of sorting out our CAL requirements for a small domain, hence my interest. If I can save us having to fork out money needlessly, I'd be delighted :)
As long as you dont have ANY MS servers you dont need CALs, so no MS fileserver/mssql/sharepoint/exchange etc etc once you have 1 MS server you need your user cals regardless of the domain platform.
The only issue with this is support, if I replace my DCs with samba and something goes wrong, whos going to support me, forum support is unacceptable because I would need help now (dont fancy 15,000 phonecalls saying they cant logon while i refresh a forum thread...). I am not talking the unix side of things, AD is incredible complicated so does go wrong occasionally.
> whos going to support me
Who do you want to support you?
There is a market for support. You can pick what sort of SLA you want, and then find a competitive quote.
Vic.
Stuff should just WORK
Kudos to the Samba team for getting this done, even if it did take some "coaxing" from the antitrust authorities to make it happen.
And while Jeremy Allison's comment about source code availability is important to some people, and there are organizations where the cost of M$ software is not a significant limiting factor, cost is indeed a factor for many organizations. (especially in these economic times)
But to reiterate what someone commented earlier - I view one of the biggest advantages of an OSS solution to be independence from the usual commercial pressures that push organizations to spend lots of time/money constantly replacing things that work perfectly well, with new buggy junk just because you won't get the time-of-day from them if you don't.
I had a Netware 3.2 server at one client years ago that ran 2.5 years without a single reboot. No web/java/flash/complex document renderers/etc etc etc to make the box exploitable, no need to keep patching it, it just sat there and served files and queued print jobs for something like 1,000 days straight. I keep saying basic I.T. stuff should be like a toaster or a refrigerator - just sit there and do its job, leave you to spend time/money on more important pursuits, until such time you decide you truly need something the existing system isn't providing you. Not just because Evil Vendor Du Jour has proclaimed that stepping off the continuous I.T. Expense Treadmill of Doom is prohibited by the EULA.
Re: Stuff should just WORK
"basic I.T. stuff should be like a toaster or a refrigerator - just sit there and do its job"
good point here. And yet no off the shelf NAS box can do the work properly if you happen to have HAM (Home Area Network) with more than 1 user and more than 1 Windows machine. And let's face it, in this age is quite common actually.
Hope Samba4 will change it.
Samba AD implementation still broken?
The SAMBA AD implementation used to be "broken" and requiring a Linux hack to increase the number of groups per user, thus making incompatible with UNIX. (Ie Solaris, AIX, NFS etc). Is this still the case? Or can SAMBA 4 actually be used on anything but Linux? Other SMB implementation would not directly map a UNIX group to a Windows group thus avoiding the issue of running Windows 2003 server in native AD mode.
Hyperv Server 2012
Is far more useful with a domain. (Without one stuff like live migration doesn't work).
I wonder what the minimal requirements for this are.
(As far as I know also hyperv server is totally free so you could do all your fileserving on that with samba as a DC) and have everything with no licensing costs for basic file / printer sharing. (Probably there is some reason you cannot dunno whether it is legally valid though).
Well done Samba - again!
I set up a Samba server for a training college when their previous Windows server crashed and burned.
It ran their whole domain - for approx 40 PC's.
It handled group policies which only allowed certain apps to run on the PC's.
It enabled all the staff to be able to hot-swap and just login at another desk.
It handled all their email and file sharing.
It sync'd to a hot-swap secondary server every night (no extra license costs).
It ran flawlessly for five years - I used to log in remotely to install updates.
And this was on a machine which was based on an mini IPX-EPIA board with a couple of SCSI drives.
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